Bogieblog

Nor'easter Results

So we had this little thing called a Nor'Easter come thru yesterday. One Weathercaster on the Nightly News (national, not local), called it a "Snow Bomb". Er, no, this is New England, it snoows, we get Nor'Easters on a regular basis.

Anyway, I got up at my usual time. Instead of working out, I shoveled about 6" of snow off the deck and to the dog pen. WS did the front walk and swept off the vehicles. Took a shower, made my lunch and put the dogs out in the pen. By that point, I had to re-sweep off my car as it had snowed an additional 2" in that time. I left about 20 minutes before usual. No plows had been thru on our road, but I made it up to 149 no trouble.

The 10 miles to Weare was not pretty. The visibility was poor (snowing very hard and very dark). Althought 149 had been plowed on our side, the Weare side had not been plowed, so it was almost impossible to tell where the road was. I caught up to a Jeep Wrangler  - I was doing 20 - been thru this no visibility scenario for 20 years, experience counts).

At the end of the road, there was some sort of to-do, so I had to make a slight detour to make it to 114. That road was better, it had been plowed and there were street lights every so often to help with visibility. I eventually made it to work at 7, taking about 1 hour and 15 minutes to travers the 25 miles.

A couple of other people showed up before 8, then the facilities manager came thru and said they were shutting down and everyone had to leave by noon for "safety reasons". I'm thinking that it would be safer to stay there as the snow was supposed to wind down between 1 and 2.

But, oh well, I left shortly before noon. Got stuck in the far end of the parking lot (when you can't see the difference between the plowed and un-plowed portion, it makes things tough. Walked back to work to find peopel trying to push a car out of a drift. Helped them push, then recieved a push from them (everyone jumped into a big, tall truck to drive to my car), got unstuck and made the drive home. Another hour and a quarter or so.

Started shoveling. Found another 18" or so where I had already shoveled, and close to 22" where it was fresh snow. Not the biggest storm we have had, but the biggest we have had in the last year or so.

 

Shoveled for a couple of hours (well, 3 - 40 minute stretches) before WS got home. He snowblowed the driveway (which the neighbor had taken one pass thru with his plow after the mail lady got stuck in the ditch).

This was the first big test for the Patriot, and it did just wonderfully. It handled the snow filled roads very well. Getting stuck in the parking lot was totally my fault as it was cruising thru the snow until I let my foot off the gas just a little, then it sunk like a rock (I suddenly realized how deep the snow was and in reaction to the surprise, lifted my foot just a bit). I cruised thru snow that was as deep as half way up my door (getting out was a bit of a challenge) for at least 100 feet and would have made it to the tire tracks I was headed for if I had't been such an idiot.

Anyway, sure, it was a decent sized storm, but seriously, a "snow bomb". Nope, just a regular, run-of-the-mill Nor'Easter.

Bad Blogging This Week

The 4-7" of snow that we were forcast to get yesterday turned into 3 seperate dustings totalling about 1/2" of snow. The storm seemed to peter out before it got this far north. Guess people will have to go down south to snowmobile this year.

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Although we haven't had much snow, it has been plenty cold out. It was in the single digits when I left for work a couple of days last week. Fortunately, there has been enough sun to bring the temps into the 20's, so my walks at lunchtime haven't been unpleasant.

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I sooooo need to get more of a life so I have something to write about once per week!

 

All They Needed Was For Me to Leave

When I get home after work, one of the first things I do is turn on the TV to the local station so I can listen to the news as I'm doing chores. My ears perked up last night when I heard them talking about a company in the town of H that was looking to hire 20 more people.

I stopped doing dishes and went to look, and there was the face of the President of the company I left not too long ago. The company is advertising at the local airport. I gues it was such a novel idea that it made the news.

Emailed my former boss and he said that they have gotten a ton of new orders and didn't have the normal slowdown that usually occurs this time of year. He also said that all the managers got to go to the airport for the to-do, which was pretty cool to him.

I'm glad they are getting on the right track and things are looking up for them. I worked with a lot of good people there and they deserve success.

Season's First Snow Storm Results

Our first real snow storm for this season occurred last Sunday and lasted into Monday. Sunday night we went out and shovelled about 4" of snow before going to bed. Monday mornig, I shovelled instead of working out (or as my workout) and WS got up early to snow blow the end of the driveway out. At that point we had accumulated another 6-7".

After that, it was hard to tell because the wind blew the snow around so badly that when we got home, there was a whole bunch more shoveling to do. However, it seemed to be mostly because of drifting and blowing, so I'm guessing we only got another 2-3", making a total of about a foot. The winds were so crazy I didn't walk Monday or Tuesday.

Only about 30 people were scheduled to come into work (the rest took the week off), but only about 10 showed up - and probably 5 of those left at lunch time.

Just goes to illustrate the difference between the business I am working for now and the manufacturing companies I used to work for; sure, there would have been a couple of people that didn't make it in, until later, but everyone would have been there knowing that it was very important to be there to get the product made and out the door to the customer.

I'm not saying one way or the other is better, just saying it is more a comment on the adjustment of working at the new place.

The last couple of days we have gotten a lot warmer temps so the snow is melting away pretty quickly. It was alomost 50 yesterday, and should get there today, so we won't have much left at the end of the day. The roof is doing its job by shedding snow, you just don't want to be under it when it does! The cats and dogs jump every time there is a THUMP of a huge chunk of snow hitting the deck, leanto or porch.

New Year's Wishes for 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May it be a healthy, fun and prosperous (in every way) year for everyone!